


Heartlatch

by heartlatchAuthor



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Original Flavour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2020-12-15 23:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 73
Words: 16,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartlatchAuthor/pseuds/heartlatchAuthor
Summary: an unsanctioned follow up to Andrew Hussie's Homestuck.Ten years after the world ended, Star and her friends play a game.logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority.—Doctor Who





	1. Act I- I

Star Rogers turned 17 today; the 7th of October, 2019. She was a typical atypical young woman. She stood in her bedroom, glancing around at the posters on her wall. Most of them bore the likeness or symbology of Captain America, her personal hero (so, too, did her otherwise-blank white t-shirt, showing a white star in a red and blue circle, the abstracted version of the hero’s iconic shield). Others showed the cast of the hit sitcom Parks and Recreation, or its central character, Leslie Knope, who Star was convinced was a reflection of her truest self. Her bed, yet unmade, was spangled with a twist of red and white blankets over washed-out blue sheets. In a corner, a desk with a laptop on it. Two windows, both above eye level, her bedroom being slightly below ground. 

A calendar on her wall showed the days leading up to today, marked off one by one. As coincidence, a game her friends had been rather excited for was launching today after ten years in development hell. Had they not been interested, perhaps Star would have done something else on her birthday, but instead, she intended to play SBURB with her online friends, and then perhaps have dinner out somewhere nice with Pop later in the evening. 

Her laptop, though closed, thwirped loudly from across the room. It was seven after ten in the morning. One of her friends was probably pestering her to get the game going already; given timezones, some of them may have already started. She was not sure. 

She patted her pockets. Her mobile phone was not where she expected it to be. It was easier, by both habit and proximity, to use her phone to respond to messages, but as it was not there, she stood over her desk, leaning forward and opening the laptop.

\-- bastardisdVoyeur [BV] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:07 --  
  
BV: Cap  
BV: Be awake already, thank you. I’ve been waiting all day and I know it’s your birthday but come on  
SC: Yikes, okay  
SC: Sorry to have, idk, needs.  
SC: Is y’alls game out yet?  
BV: Yeah for like 3 hours now.  
BV: Well, servers are up, for preorders. Digital download doesn’t go live for another couple days.  
SC: Ummm.  
BV: Your copy should have arrived last night  
BV: Er, with your mail yesterday  
BV: To,mezpones  
BV: Timezones  
SC: You preordered me a copy?  
BV: Yeah happy birthday I guess  
BV: SV and I just wanted to make sure we got this off the ground.  
SC: Probably a good idea  
SC: I’ll go look for it.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50043947#workskin)


	2. Act 1- II

Star looked around her room, then dived toward her bed, momentarily falling through the air in an instant of violent abandon; she impacted the cushions with a thunderous flump. 

Once there, she flailed about madly, hands, arms, legs, all questing for her phone. She felt it, a hard plastic rectangle among the billowing blankets and plush pillows. Satisfied, she climbed up in an awkward motion, half falling off the bed before rose to her feet. She pocketed her phone fluidly. 

She texted BV.

SC: Let’s hope Pop isn’t home.  
BV: potentially annoying  
BV: I know he can be  
BV: Talkative 

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50156441#workskin)


	3. Act 1- III

Outside her room, Star glanced around corners before entering the larger parts of her single-story house, with cozy, if unfinished, basement. The kitchen was well illuminated by outside light and the walls of the hallway that opened on the expansive backyard were entirely glass. The home was tight, but far from labyrinthine; there was a living room, onto which the front door opened, and from there, a kitchen, then a north hall, while to the left, there was a west hall, and the two bedrooms. Directly behind the right side of the living room was the garage. 

Conveniently, it was easy to see that Pop wasn’t present before she had to enter a room he was in, unless he was in the laundry room. Were that the case, though, he was not between her and yesterday’s mail. 

\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering ephemeralsCaesura [EC] at 10:20 --  
  
SC: Yesterday’s Mail  
SC: for your band name list  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering ephemeralsCaesura [EC] at 10:20 --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50277977#workskin)


	4. Act 1- IV

Star searched the surfaces of her house; the countertops in the kitchen, the various end tables and shelftops in the living room, the chairs in the hall. Magazines and bills, in a few different places, gave evidence of various deliveries through the week, but yesterday’s mail, specifically, was absent.  


Pop, at least, was not present. His car was not in the driveway, and he hadn’t parked in the front garage in a year or more, as they'd stashed more and more stuff in there and it had gotten too cluttered. The garage in the backyard had not been used for cars in Star’s memory. There was, at present, a small simulacrum of a fifties diner in that garage; a bar and jukebox, chrome, and stools, with that shiny, red plasticky material covering them. The entire thing was tacky, and Star wasn’t entirely sure how it had gotten there. They didn’t really entertain company there, or anything.  


Star decided to go outside to check the mail.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50351177#workskin)


	5. Act 1- V

The mailbox was empty. The front yard was predominated by a large tree, which nearly obscured the house from view. Its branches hung low and leafy, though the leaves were getting sparser by the day, so you could see the roof of the house through it, and the front lawn was bedecked in shards of orange leaf.  


The driveway was curved, coming from the street, and forking, one concrete path heading to the garage, and one gravel path passing by the garage on the right. It went to the backyard, to the other three-car-garage with the tiny diner. It was hard to see into the backyard from the front; the gravel driveway was obscured by the long, thin leaves of the trees in the neighbour’s yard, growing right up against the chain link fence that bordered them.  


Star growled at the mailbox. She looked around.  


To her left, the sun hung halfway up the sky, luminous, its rays faintly irritating against her skin. To her right, the blue of the sky was obscured by the canopy of yellowing leaves, voluminous, filtering the yard in amber and viridian. The wind played at the leaves above her, ominous, creaking, musical.  


Today was Star’s seventeenth birthday, which felt, like each that she could remember, as if it could not be real. That this game should elude her, delaying time she seeks to spend with those distant yet so close, was but a single struck bell in a symphony of luck. Fortune will have its way with her, for misery or grandiosity. This song is Chance itself; a truth that cares not if she acknowledges it and asks little of her, only pulling in this direction, then another, regardless of feeling or intent. Just so, perhaps, the kindest of all melodies.  
  


“There are no chances so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage;  
and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.” —Emily Dickinson

Star wondered aloud if she had that right. She was adamant Dickinson had said that.  


Star sighed. The day would, doubtless, meander.  


_HEARTLATCH_

  
[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50425346#workskin)


	6. Act 1- VI

Pop was not at home; the car was not in the concrete driveway, the one car garage, the gravel driveway, or the three car garage. The mail was likewise in absentia.  


Star checked her phone. If nothing else, she was absolutely certain an array of birthday missives had piled up in her inbox. She opened PesterLite. Indeed, three of her Chums had sent her messages in the past several minutes.  


\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:44 --  
  
CB: happy birthday sTar!!1!  
CB: oops  
CB: anyway I know youre busy but i want you to know we care about your birthday as it’s own thing and would still all be tellin you how much we love you even if sburb didn’t come out today  
CB: just luck of the draw we get two awesome! things on the same day  
CB: Have fun, don;t strange a be-er!  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:44 --  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:50 --  
  
SV: Happy Birthday  
SV: My gift to you is unfortunately delayed due to personal reasons  
SV: Namely that I’m lazy, so I’m sorry.  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:52 --  
  
\-- bastardisdVoyeur [BV] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 10:56 --  
  
BV: Oh, amazon says you got my birthday gift already too  
SC: You as well?  
SC: heavens to betsy  
BV: Who else?  
SC: Oh, SV says hers is delayed because she’s lazy. CB didn’t mention anything but I assume he’ll remember and send me some game or whatever. And the aforementioned SBURB disc. Y’all are too good to me, pitching in on a group gift.  
BV: for entirely self-serving reasons.  
BV: Like honestly I was kinda worried about it  
SC: Oh?  
BV: Well I mean you expect that kind of shit from CB. I can’t remember if I’ve ever gotten a gift from him that wasn’t through steam? Like “I saw this on sale and thought it might be fun now play with me you whore” is probably the closest thing to a card I’ve gotten on my birthday from him  
SC: He was downright sweet earlier  
BV: He talks to you though  
BV: Like my interactions with him are mostly in games

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50490431#workskin)


	7. Act 1- VII

Star looked at the front porch. She’d missed it before, she guessed; a package was sitting just under the door next to her door. Star had built the other door herself; she’d found an old back door at a garage sale, bought it, knocked out the windows and replaced them with whiteboard surface, added some corkboard, and called it good. Then they moved, and it was too large for her bedroom. Pop had suggested using it as a welcome sign, and to leave notes for each other or neighbours, posted with transparent blue thumbtacks or else scrawled on the white surface. Neighbourhood children had, on occasion, sharpied profanities or phallic imagery on it.  


The door had thus been repainted several times; it was not yet due for another, although it was peeling in certain places. You could see just how thick the paint was at those spots, since the layers showed through. Teal on the outside, white underneath, a few different autumn colours from the year prior, a lime green… That one made her shudder. Lime, on the outside of your house.  
  


SC: I think I see your package? No idea where the rest of the mail is.  
BV: Think it went fedex actually. International purchase or something. Can’t wait for that one day amazon delivery with robots. They’ll bring you your order while you sleep  
BV: order a butt plug  
BV: robotic insertion is the default option  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50526659#workskin)


	8. Act 1- VIII

Star picked the box up. It was about as wide as her forearm was long, and slightly taller. It was thicker than a book, movie, or game might be, but still thinner than, say, a stuffed animal might be. Maybe two and a half or three inches thick. Somewhere around that. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it wasn’t so light she felt she could just huck it about without damaging things. The side of the box, of course, had the awkward smiling Amazon logo.  


She headed back inside. Star had never been particularly good at inventory management or bothered to learn various data structures for her sylladex. She made due with the few stacked items she could. As a younger child, this had caused some problems (accidentally throwing a tampon because she’d picked up a pencil, and the like), but she’d grown accustomed to sorting things into bags before she captchalogued them, to make the most of her four cards.

[Open Birthday Present](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50579387#workskin)


	9. Open Birthday Present [Act 1- IX]

Her living room was wide, but not particularly deep. The door opened right on the middle of it; to the left, a piano took up essentially that whole half the room, aside from the bookshelves and cushioned bench against the front window. To the right, a couch and a small fireplace.  


As Star passed it, she tapped out a few notes on the piano, an absent-minded trace of a melody both calm and haunting.  


Behind the piano, a half wall separated the living from the dining room; behind the couch, a solid wall. The dining room was really just a chunk of hallway between the half-wall of the living room and the countertop at the edge of the kitchen, but they’d made a small table fit. Two chairs sat at either end. The other two chairs, in case they had company, lived in the greenhouse-like back hallway, with its curved skylight windows.  


Star set the box on the table and sliced it open.  
  


SC: Okay so yes   
SC: I like Assassin’s Creed  
SC: But when would I ever actually use this?   
BV: I don’t know, put it on a shelf  
BV: Like everybody else does with collectibles.  
SC: Well thank you  
SC: For the ostentatious stealth weapon I’ll never be able to use.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50701388#workskin)


	10. Act 1- X

Star returned to her bedroom, carrying the boxed hidden-blade. It was authentic, although probably not quite sharp enough to kill someone in the time required to make it an effective stealth weapon. Then again, Star was never exactly sure how the weapon was supposed to work in those games. She stuck it on her bookshelf, in front of her XBox games, where she suppose it made the most sense.  


Other shelves had many books, most of them junky, young adult fantasy that she recognised were repetitive. She read for fun rather than intellectual superiority, unlike some people she knew. She had some textbooks to prepare for the college classes she wanted to take as a senior but probably wouldn’t, more sketchbooks than she’d ever use, a few volumes on sand mandalas, their construction, and their history, and an encyclopedia she hadn’t opened since elementary school.  


To the left of the bookshelf, her desk beckoned. She needed to kill some time before Pop returned, anyway. Paternal errands, she knew, could be tremendously time consuming, although he usually attempted to spend time with her on her birthday.  


She may as well respond to some of these messages.  


She opened her laptop.  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 11:06 --  
  
SC: Thanks for the birthday wishes  
CB: Nbd, hows the day?   
CB: BV says you dont have the game yet.   
SC: That is true  
SC: Speaking of  
SC: Y’all didn’t tell me much about this game  
SC: Like I think BV mentioned it but just in passing   
SC: And then suddenly last week all of you were seriously hounding me over it.  
SC: Except EC but you know how they are  
CB: EC is indeed like that  
CB: But yeah so BV pitched me on like  
CB: The sims but multiplayer adn with some rpg shit  
SC: A sims MMORPG? That sounds absolutely bonkers  
CB: not like mmo its just with your friends  
CB: but yeah basically  
SC: Well that seems interesting enough  
SC: All I really knew about it is it spent like ten years in development hell  
SC: Since the original developer disbanded  
SC: After its holding company was involved with that hoax  
SC: About all the meteors  
CB: oh yea yea  
CB: BV told me about that i think  
CB: weird shit  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50733452#workskin)


	11. Act 1- XI

Star’s room, though not underground, felt like it was; the windows being slightly higher up on the wall, coupled with the heavy foliage around that side of the house’s exterior cast the natural light in a muddled, green and brown tone. Only from certain angles, if one was looking intentionally, could you see the blue sky.  


The wall to the left of her bed was heavily decorated, holding four different posters and several photographs: one from Parks and Rec, signed by several cast members, one each from the first two Captain America movies, both signed by Sebastian Stan (the only signed Cap posters that could be found on eBay, she was assured; EC had tried their hardest), and one slightly battered one of the cast of The Office, taken from a production photo and printed at a print shop, as you could tell from close examination. It was very blurry; Rainn Wilson in particular was almost unrecognisable except by the context of the others.  


SC: Recognising of course that I am not a Gamer  
SC: How on earth do I know nothing about this game?  
SC: As I’m sure you’re aware I am actually a huge fan of the Sims  
CB: who isnt  
CB: those simmy bois. theyre just  
SC: After the development got tricky, was it well publicized?  
CB: so so simmy  
SC: Or did they just say “hey actually it’s releasing next month” just before they put it out?  
CB: shit idk  
CB: SV and BV haven’t shut up about this game for ewhat feels like forever but that doesn’t actually mean anything  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50768734#workskin)


	12. Act 1- XII

The photos on that wall were largely familial in origin; her and Pop at various little places or sometimes her dressed up for some crazy idea of his, like the Victorian-dress Volunteer Car Wash in the middle of January. There was still snow on the ground, although the sun was out. The day was, as she recalled, only slightly chilly, but rather uncomfortably windy.  


Her desk sat on the other windowed wall, across from her bed. There was a poster from the first Avengers movie to the desks left, and another Parks and Recreation poster on the right, this one also homemade, but slightly less rumpled. On the desks shelves were various knickknacks, books, usually bookmarked heavily, journals, all manner of ink pens and markers, a closed glass jar of cookies, and an old, faded, plush tiger, who was probably gorgeously speckled in crisp white and warm brown once, was now a uniform gray colour, well work around the seams. Star called him Traxxie, although she wasn’t quite sure why.  


CB: like i just do what Im told lol  
SC: Aren’t you usually the one pushing new games on us?  
CB: firstly how dare you  
CB: and secondly yes absolutely  
CB: So no room to complain when two of my best friends do it yknow  
SC: Ahh kay yeah  
SC: I should probably see what BV is harassing me about  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 11:15 --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50860540#workskin)


	13. Act 1- XIII

Taken as a whole, Star’s bedroom was one strand of twinkling lights away from a cliche; Star was aware of this. The superhero posters were supposed to take the edge off, as it were, but as the zeitgeist of girldom grew increasingly enamoured with Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan’s implicit connection, romantic or otherwise, they had seemed less and less effective.  


And then, of course, the shift from microblogging websites to video-based social media outlets had left her in the dust, a living relic of a bygone era.  


Pop had always said she was a girl out of time.  
  


SC: What time is it there anyway  
SC: Have you been waiting all day for me to wake up?  
BV: Yeah I’m literally eating dinner as we speak  
BV: I did other stuff earlier. Errands  
BV: as to clear my week out so I could focus on SBURB.   
SC: You’re not even a whole year older than me  
SC: What errands could you possibly have to run  
BV: IKEA  
BV: what other errands does a swede ever run  
BV: but actually I biked to the library to ask for help fixing my laptop. My wifi connection has been shitty lately and I didn’t want to leap into SBURB unprepared.   
SC: That’s so European  
SC: Biking everywhere and using libraries regularly  
SC: What was wrong with your WiFi anyway?  
BV: Something with drivers or whatever  
BV: updates not going through correctly so my wifi card wasn’t maintaining consistency I guess  
BV: Not everyone gets a new laptop every other year  
SC: I hope you’re not talking about me  
SC: As I have not replaced this since like eighth grade  
BV: oh no no SV likes to brag about her lack of computer errors like she somehow is better at taking care of her stuff than the rest of us  
BV: But it is easy when you just get a new one every other year, regardless of its condition  
BV: she does run them into the ground, too  
BV: like if you pay attention  
BV: like july or so, every even numbered year  
BV: she’ll be quieter or even disappear for a minute  
BV: Doesn’t think we’ll notice but I do  
SC: She does spend about every waking hour on a computer  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50962591#workskin)


	14. Act 1- XIV

Outside Star’s house, a car pulled up, into concrete driveway in front of the garage. The car, or rather, its driver, didn’t bother to open the garage or go in; naturally, as the garage, like many of its kind, had devolved into a rather large attached storage shed, rather than being an actual garage for an actual car.  


Star heard the car door close from her room and looked up, over her shoulder and out her bedroom door. She could barely see the front door, if she stretched her neck, which she did, nearly falling out of her chair. The door cracked open.  
  


SC: That’s Pop, be back in a bit  
BV: Enjoy birthday nonsense  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering bastardisdVoyeur [BV] at 11:32 --  
  
BV: maybe install the game while you-  
BV: or whatever, yknow  


[Attempt to Avoid Parental Confrontation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50962642#workskin)


	15. Attempt to Avoid Parental Confrontation [Act 1- XV]

Star exited her room. It wasn’t that she _didn’t_ want to interact with Pop, necessarily; it was her birthday, and she had, historically, enjoyed some of the celebratory interactions with her father figure. But even at seventeen, the mind and heart are easily swept up in the prospect of group interactions, especially combined as this one would be with a novel activity; which is to say, Star was, perhaps despite her reservations, a little too excited for this game. So she snuck through the house as best she could, to avoid a lengthy interaction with Pop while still finding the mail.  


Her back the wall, she crouched as she entered the dining room; she could hear Pop in the kitchen, so she stayed low, behind the counter.  


He hadn’t turned the lights on. The curtain in the living room was drawn, but the windows in the kitchen and skylit hallway cast the room in odd shadows. Objects, furniture, walls, all were gilt in sunlight on one edge, deep blue on the other. She could see Pop’s shadow as he moved in the kitchen; on the far wall of the garage hallway, his figure, tall, broad shouldered and lanky, as his thick arms pulled a glass down from the rack over the counter. Light poured through the glass, a refraction, yellow with smatterings of rainbow brilliance, shooting across the piano side of the living room in an arc for a second before he turned toward the refrigerator, his shadow vanishing.  


He was pouring himself water from the fridge spout; she could hear the crunch of ice. Now was the moment. She shot up from her tight crouch, ready to search the counter for the mail in a mere handful of seconds.  


But Pop was not looking at the fridge.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/50995468#workskin)


	16. Act 1- XVI

She locked gazes with Pop briefly, his features blank, somehow seeing though her, into her very soul. Her eyes widened and she dropped back beneath the counter. She needed a plan. A distraction.  


She only had her phone captchalogued. Annoying, but predictable; she hated to clutter her limited inventory. She retrieved it and placed it on the ground to her left, before captchaloguing the two chairs and the small rug that lay under the table, in that order. This might end up messy. She captchalogued her phone again. Her inventory was full.  


She crept forward and rose from behind the counter, into the kitchen proper, into inevitable strife.  


[Engage in Inevitable Parental Strife](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51229138#workskin)


	17. Engage in Inevitable Parental Strife [Act 1- XVII]

Pop attempted, naturally, to deliver exuberant birthday cheer, which was not to Star’s liking at all; she retaliated with swift abjuration. She sidestepped, spotting the pile of mail on the counter near Pop.  


Star began her assault. She captchalogued a glass from the counter behind her; her sylladex full, a chair was ejected across the kitchen, into the hallway, shattering against the floor. She captchalogued another glass, furiously, firing a second chair at the refrigerator, where it exploded into splinters. Pop panicked, backing out of the kitchen at the furious display, bending over his precious chairs. Star moved to captchalogue the pile of mail, spitting the dining room rug out of her sylladex, where it landed on Pop’s head, draping him in the fabric. He couldn’t see her. She absconded with the mail.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51229285#workskin)


	18. Act 1- XVIII

Her door locked, Pop sufficiently distracted, and the mail retrieved, Star extracted the various kitchen items from her sylladex, leaving them on her desk. The pile of mail, which she had set on her bed, included a couple of packages, some envelopes with bills, an appealing magazine about home gardening, this issue focusing on the proper maintenance of peppers in arid or semi-arid climates, and a catalogue of 1950s replica decor. Gag. 

Her phone was now once again at the accessible top card of her Sylladex. Say what one would about the Stack Modus, but once your understood it, the simplicity was reliable. 

She examined the packages more closely. 

Both were addressed to her; one formally labelled, to a Miss Star Rogers, from one Altered Dreams Studios. This, Star assumed, was SBURB. The other, in a handwritten scrawl, was probably from CB; it was addressed to “our glorious captian.” 

She opened that one first. There was a CD-ROM case, thin, transparent, with a hand drawn cover depicting a man with a scythe that was also a gun, somehow, facing down a scribbly monster that looked too penguin-like to be taken seriously. 

Presumably, Star thought, another one of CB’s amateur games with code ripped from a hundred different places. It would assuredly toast her computer if she played more than an hour, if it even installed. She found it endearing. It was labelled “Blod Demonds 6: Evisceration,” with sharpie’d, untidy letters. 

  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 11:45 --  
  
SC: Blod Demonds 6, huh?  
CB: my best work  
CB: reusing ps4 code is a bihtc and a half  
CB: bt it should run wothout crashing  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 11:45 --  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering bastardisdVoyeur [BV] at 11:45 --  
  
SC: Have you played Blod Demonds 6 yet?  
BV: a masterpiece  
BV: of industrial sabotage, at least  
BV: I put it on a burner laptop i bought at a pantbank  
BV: It lives no more  
SC: I know that is almost certainly a Swedish word I just don’t know, which you can’t remember the English word for  
SC: But you put your pants in a bank?  
BV: The game handles the gpu really poorly and overclocks the cpu and eats up more ram than seems physically possible. Components were literally fried.  
BV: Oh  
BV: Pant shop  
BV: Uhhh  
BV: You have those in America, yes? Stores you can get loans from if you leave them valuable stuff? Sounds like the most american concept ever to be honest.  
SC: Pawn Shop?  
BV: Why the fuck  
BV: okay sure  
SC: It is really american actually. We even have TV shows about them.  
BV: Ridiculous  
BV: Yeah the only one near me is Swedish only so I’d never seen the English word in context I guess  
BV: small town woes  
BV: believe me this life is hellish  
BV: Without the internet there would be nothing to do  
BV: And we would all turn to alcoholism  
BV: most of us do at some point anyway  
SC: That’s depressing  
BV: So is Elinsberg  
BV: Oh so you got CB’s gift  
SC: That isn’t a real town  
BV: which means you got the mail  
BV: which means  
SC: Yes yes I have your game  
BV: yay

[Examine SBURB](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51229522#workskin)


	19. Examine SBURB [Act 1- XIX]

Star opened the other package. There are two envelopes and a small leaflet of paper inside. She looked at the leaflet first.  
  


Congratulations on your SBURB: Special Edition preorder. It’s been a long road getting the game to this point, and after ten years, we are really proud to put this in players’ hands. We’re so glad you could be one of the first to play SBURB, and wish you luck.  
—Altered Dreams Studios  


  
  


The text on the leaflet was quite smudged; it looked like it may have been made on a typewriter. What sort of wild game developers kept those around the office? No longer professional, a typewriter now said “we try hard to seem offbeat,” which just struck Star as pretentious. She grimaced, raising an eyebrow, and looked at the envelopes. Both, despite having been in the larger package, had a label with her name and address on them, probably for collation and shipping or some other bureaucratic nonsense.  


Both had pale yellow symbols and text; one had the words “SBURB Special Client Edition” underneath an abstract arrangement of squares and triangles resembling a two-story house with an attached garage. The other read “SBURB Special Server Edition” and depicted a strange geometric circle with various symmetrical pointy bits, like something a clever eight year old might make with a spirograph. Star was perplexed.  
  


SC: So, um, what?  
\-- bastardisdVoyeur [BV] is now an idle chum! --   
SC: Phhht  
SC: Okay then  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering bastardisdVoyeur [BV] at 12:03 --  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 12:03 --   
  
SC: So I have this game  
SC: There’s two discs  
SC: Do you have any idea what we do here?   
CB: oh sweet  
CB: but uhh not really  
CB: *briefly googles*  
SC: Don’t do that. Please.  
CB: So this game is run peer2peer  
CB: there’s no like server for the multiplayer  
CB: if you install the client i’m down to be your host player while you get the ropes  
CB: BV got pulled away  
CB: i’m sure he won’t mind  
SC: Uh huh  
SC: But sure. He’s gotten a little too cheeky lately anyway  


[Install SBURB](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51229696#workskin)


	20. Install SBURB [Act 1- XX]

Star inserted the disc into her laptop. There had previously been an audio CD in there; she had listened to _Barenaked Ladies_, of all things, when last she tidied up her room. She captchalogued it, not wanting to set it on the desk and unsure where the case was. Her phone was now inaccessible, underneath the Server Disc, which was under the aforementioned CD of aforementioned awkward-to-google band. 

She pressed the enter key; the client disc had opened a command-prompt-looking window. Star didn’t know enough about computers to think it was anything but janky, but she pressed enter when it asked if she wanted to install SBURB nonetheless, and told it that yes she wanted an icon on her desktop (crowded though it was with icons and folders), and that yes, it may as well launch the application when it was done installing. 

She fidgeted absently with the Assassin’s Creed Blade while she waited for her laptop to be not slow (as if), trying to figure out how it fit on her wrist. When her laptop thwirped, she almost jumped out of her seat, so intently focused on the blade was she.  
  


\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:11 --   
  
SV: Hey Star  
SV: So I understand you have obtained the game  
SV: Excellent  
SC: It’s taking like a billion years to install  
SC: And there’s two different versions so  
SC: Waiting forever I guess  
SV: Well you don’t need the server part right away, I don’t think. I am pleased by peer-to-peer multiplayer; I think it will bring a more cooperative community dynamic to this game, rather than the grossly vacuous approach on MMOs  
SV: I currently have neither of my discs, mind  
SV: Although the package tracker says they have been delivered  
SV: So we shall see what happens there. Regardless, I’ve been looking at some first impressions online as they come in. Let me know if you have questions.  
SC: Yeah, of course. I trust you to find stuff way more than CB  
SV: Not sure I blame you.  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering seraphsVindicator [SV] at 12:15 --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51537052#workskin)


	21. Act 1- XXI

Star tabbed back to the installer. It was babbling incoherent text about installing various spatial rendering components, or something like that; it was moving slightly faster than she could track. It seemed like she had a few minutes to kill.  


She decided to check on some of her fanfics; her backlog had been getting a little out of hand lately. She opened her web browser, Lyssira, which she preferred for its muted mauve tones and minimalist style, and navigated to perhaps the most delightful digital distraction yet devised, archiveofourown.org, and check your bookmarked fanfictions.  


These authors, at least, know what they’re doing. She far preferred Supernatural fanfiction to the real McCoy, these days, for example. She wasn’t as big on some others, most comedic works had fanbases that focused on the wrong things, or didn’t capture the tone correctly, to say nothing of all the shitty takes she’d seen on Captain America. Those made her stomach churn. She loved Captain America with all her heart, but most other people that loved him were, apparently, idiots.  


Probably better not to waste time on any of these, though. She wondered if there was SBURB fanfiction, yet; the game was quite new, but a decade or more of development hell could create some weird fanbases before things even launched.  


She looked. There were a few hundred entries already. She scrolled through them, one eyebrow raised. She fidgeted with the Hidden Blade some more, sliding it open and closed with her thumb while looking at titles and summaries. Some of these fanfictions seemed to be about NPC and player insert characters. Others, with poetic titles, mentioned dreams and stars and other abstract and celestial concepts interpreted with fanciful vagueness.  


Her laptop’s screen went white, with essentially no warning. A [loading screen](https://www.homestuck.com/story/137) filled the display, showing that same spirograph image, cycling through various arrangements and colours, as a fairly loud electronic rhythm played through her tinny laptop speakers. Startled, she yelped, and accidentally captchalogued the hidden blade she was holding.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51579487#workskin)


	22. Act 1- XXII

And then the screen just stopped, replaced with the word SBURB in that same pale yellow-tan sort of colour, over a plain black screen. She waited. She tapped keys. She clicked the black screen. She clicked each of the letters in turn. She slapped her keyboard like a frustrated child and grunted like an ape, a fairly ludicrous idea that no sensible person would imagine would do any good nor be particularly entertaining.  


She alt-tabbed over to message CB, her phone still inaccessible.  
  


SC: So it installed and played some music that went WAY too hard for a goshdarn loading screen, of all things, and then it’s just stuck on the logo screen?  
CB: oh cool  
CB: sorry i was grabbing some snacks  
CB: mine is done too  
CB: Hey I can see your room!  
SC: what.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51686512#workskin)


	23. Act 1- XXIII

Star’s disheveled bedspread suddenly moved vertically, all at once, as a twisted mass floating in midair, unbeholden to the laws of gravity in a way that made her skin crawl just a little. Levitating blankets? Sure, if we must. Fabric behaving stiffly and solidly was one step too far.  


It fell back to the bed, sliding onto the floor.  


SC: Was that you?  
CB: yea sorry getting the hang of the controls still  
CB: theres a lot of menus  
CB: also tbh playing this with a trackpad was a dumb idea  
SC: Not to completely flip out  
SC: But how is this game letting you move my stuff around? I have tape over my webcam, anyway!  
CB: oh no I can see your room from above look  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51686548#workskin)


	24. Act 1- XXIV

He sent her a screenshot. 

SC: What the devil have you gotten me into?  
CB: its pretty cool altho thinking about how it wrks will break your brain a lot  
CB: i wouldn’t even dare to look a tthe code. It is just a massive set of files though  
SC: Alright I will play along. Color me intrigued I suppose. What are we even supposed to do?  
CB: no idea lemme google some walkthroughs  
CB: i can see you rolling your eyes  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 12:27 --  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering seraphsVindicator [SV] at 12:28 --  
  
SC: CB is in over his head  
SC: What are we supposed to do  
SV: All of the walkthroughs I am seeing are a little on the incoherent side  
SV: Day one, I guess; everybody thinks they’ve got the chops to be the new sherpa. But they’re all rushed. For right now, it looks like there are some essential equipment items in the Phernalia Registry section of the menu that CB should deploy for you  
SV: Ideally all in easy proximity, which may require some rearranging of your house.  
SC: Also what the heck even is this game, while we’re on the subject?  
SV: I should probably tell him about that before he breaks your house.  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:31 --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51904234#workskin)


	25. Act 1- XXV

The wall in the corner of Star’s bedroom wasn’t there. Or, well, it was, but it had been distended about six feet to the left and another couple of feet back. Star tried to watch closely now, but she blinked and missed it as the wall moved another out to the left of her desk. There was now a wide area of floor she did not previously have access to. 

And then one of her bookshelves disappeared.  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 12:34 --  
  
SC: What on earth are you doing?  
CB: SV messaged me  
CB: Told me it was v important to the game going smoothly that I put these things in the game close together  
CB: they are oart of the games crafting alchemy system or whatever  
CB: need them move on, to progression, that is.  
CB: apparently you can’t move them once you’ve placed them  
CB: so I’m making sure there’s room in your room  
SC: How big are these items?  
CB: Uhhh big  
CB: Like bigger than fridges  
CB: Here look  


[CB: Deploy Phernalia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51915409#workskin)


	26. CB: Deploy Phernalia [Act 1- XXVI]

A machine, gleaming and polished, thunked loudly onto her bedroom floor. She sincerely hoped Pop was otherwise occupied, although he did have quite the mess on his hands.  


The device, large, rectangular, covered in rivets, vaguely resembled a furnace. Star inspected it from a distance, in case another device was quickly incoming. It would be rather like CB to ignore her bodily safety in his haste to deploy these.  


The machine had a wheel on one side of its smokestack-looking tube, which extended vertically from the bulkier, box-like body. Along the upper portion of the box-section, it rounded off, looking like a tank, potentially; there were display screens on all the sides of it star could see.  


She was correct to anticipate CB’s eagerness. Another machine, this one narrow, with spindles and wheels and a handful of buttons and slots, fit in to the right of the other one. It resembled, as no other comparison presented itself, an enormous lathe.  


SC: Would you mind explaining what these are, when you have a minute?  
CB: yea certainly. One to go  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/51955204#workskin)


	27. Act 1- XXVII

A third machine appeared, filling the last bit of space CB had made in her room and then some. Her desk was shifted toward the right wall, scraping against her bookshelf. She cringed.  


This third machine looked like an enormous platform with an antenna. Star raised an eyebrow.  
  


SC: Okay explanation time  
CB: Well I have names for you  
CB: the flat one is the alchemiter  
CB: the middle one that looks like a sweing machine is a totem lathe  
CB: And the big tank one is a cruxtruder  
CB: still unsure what these mean or do  
CB: There is a punch card in this menu too. You should take that  
CB: i guess maybe now we open your Cruxtruder? SV is not responding at the moment.  
CB: also why is your kitchen such a holy mess  
CB: did you and pop get into it  


[Star: Examine Cruxtruder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/52010206#workskin)


	28. Star: Examine Cruxtruder [Act 1- XXVIII]

Star attempted to spin the wheel on the Cruxtruder. The lid, at the top of the machine, rumbled a little as she spun it, but it stopped at a certain point, unable to push the lid open. CB would have to figure that one out himself.  


Star decided preemptive action was better, re-Pop, than waiting for him to come to her, especially if he hadn’t yet cleaned up the bits of chair and other debris in the kitchen.  


She looked around the living room; through the window, she could see that his car was gone. She must have missed the sound in the commotion, what with the warping of the physical dimensions of her room, and all. That kind of stuff could really distract a girl.  


Maybe it was better to try and open the Cruxtruder herself. She looked in the garage for an implement that might be used to pry it open.  


The garage was cluttered with boxes and large trash bags filled with the collected debris of a combined six decades of life. Star had no idea where she might find anything these days; Pop moves stuff around in the garage all the time, when he was looking for things to redecorate the house with or supplies for various crafts. Before fifties diners, Pop had spent six months weaving baskets at every possible moment.  


Something caught Star’s eye. Between two boxes on a metal shelf that was holding far too much weight, causing it to flex slightly at several locations that, to Star, looked less than perfectly safe, was a sylladex card.  


She picked it up, rather than captchaloguing it, as someone less familiar with this system might foolishly do. It wasn’t, as she first thought, another sylladex card, but rather, she assumed, a Fetch Modus. A sort of purplish taupe color, it had a symbol on it like a line with two arrows pointing toward it, and read “Mirror.”  


For lack of better information, she tried it out.  


It flipped her sylladex. She looked at the back of the modus card. That’s all it did, apparently; flip one’s current sylladex, from left to right. Potentially infinitely, she assumed. She did it again. And again. Nonsequential modi might get very little benefit from this, but if one’s modus demanded some chronological sequencing, as Star’s did, it might be rather convenient.  


With her sylladex flipped, her phone was now on top of her captchalogue deck, above the Server Disc, the Barenaked Ladies CD, and the Hidden Blade.  


She messaged SV.  
  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering seraphsVindicator [SV] at 12:42 --  
  
SC: So what am I really supposed to do with this Cruxtruder? CB is being his usual gung-ho self.  
SC: I figured I’d pry it open  
SC: As the wheel isn’t getting the job done, but I can’t find a crowbar or screwdriver or whatever  
SV: You got yourself into this mess  
SV: But yeah I’ll bail you out  
SV: I too have walked through the crucible of gaming with CB  
SC: How can someone who spends so much time playing games  
SC: and who actually makes games, if you can call them that,  
SV: Also, potentially stupid question: you mentioned two versions of the game. That means you have both of them, yes?  
SC: be so completely devoid of common sense, when games are concerned, specifically?  
SC: It’s not just that he’s a dumbass.  
SC: He is, that’s not my point.  
SC: It’s that he’s a gamer who is kinda terrible at games.  
SV: Ehhhhh  
SV: Is this your first time playing a game with him, from day one?  
SC: Also, yes, I have both discs. CB told me to use the client one for now.  
SV: Okay. Good to know.  
SC: And I suppose so.  
SC: And why do you ask? About my discs, that is.  
SV: Just making sure we’re all prepared, I guess.  
SV: He attacks the learning curve very differently than, say, you or I.  
SV: He is very good at games. He isn’t a master of any of them, but he’s pretty good at a lot of different things. More so than most of us.  
SV: But also, yes, he’s a dumbass.  
SV: In other news, from what I’m seeing, you don’t necessarily need to pry it open, although that might be an option still. Most people just hit it with something heavy.  


[Search Garage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/53611270#workskin)


	29. Search Garage [Act 1- XXIX]

Star couldn’t find a crowbar, or a hammer. The garage wasn’t well organised, mind, but SV couldn’t be a second set of eyes, and CB seemed otherwise occupied. Absently, she flipped her sylladex a few times, then smirked, as she realised she could fidget with her inventory as a whole, because that was clearly a grand idea that couldn’t go wrong in the slightest. An idea hit her, and she walked back toward her bedroom.  
  


SC: I think perhaps BV’s birthday present might be useful in this instance  
SV: Er, possibly  
SC: It is just a flat piece of metal. That can pry stuff open as good as any screwdriver, yes?  
SV: Potentially, I guess.  
SV: Books are also kinda heavy, and I know you keep a lot of those. That might be an option, in lieu of a hammer.  
SC: Worth a try, if nothing else works. Thanks  
  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:45 --  
  
CB: hey star I got your things set up  
CB: and have been messing around with this  
CB: it looks like I can basically do anything I need to with your house but some of it costs grist  
CB: oh this game has a currency called grist  
CB: so wacth out for more of that.  
CB: But like i could make new rooms in your house or whatever  
CB: or like

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/54714199#workskin)


	30. Act 1- XXX

Star jumped backward as the door to her bedroom, frame still attached to it, wall crumbling beside it, were ripped from its proper place by an invisible force.  


As if hesitant, the door was pulled to the side and set down, next to the door to Pop’s room opposite hers, which it leaned back on, gravity suddenly taking hold of it again.  
  


CB: shit shit sorry  
CB: internets being fucky  
CB: i was trying to see if I could open the door for you but then lag happened  


[Enter Bedroom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/54860311#workskin)


	31. Enter Bedroom [Act 1- XXXI]

Star cautiously stepped through the doorway into her bedroom, if it could even be called that, now. The gaping maw of plaster and lumber that served to demarcate where the hallway ended and her bedroom began. The remnants of privacy now ripped from the remainder of her remaining adolescent years. The last vestiges of a normal fucking birthday, as it were.  


She was tickled, though, by the sight opposite it: Pop effectively had two doors now. That was silly.  
  


SC: Holy shit CB is ruining my house  
SV: At least he has the power to fix it?  


[Open Cruxtruder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/54965230#workskin)


	32. Open Cruxtruder [Act 1- XXXII]

Shaking her head once more at the entrance to her room, Star approached the Cruxtruder. She flipped her sylladex once more, burying her phone but freeing up the Hidden Blade. She clambered up onto the Cruxtruder, awkwardly, balancing with one foot on the blank display and one on the curved section next to it. She wobbled slightly. With her thumb, she pushed the blade out. It was a little sticky; she imagined tape or some other adhesive had been used to keep the blade in position during some part of the assembly process, but had been removed before it was boxed (as, when she’d opened it, the blade was obviously extended, which was sensible, as if one was selling a functional _Assassin’s Creed_ Hidden Blade, one wanted to show the blade in all its shiny metallic glory.)  


Star shimmied around the Cruxtruder, now balancing between it and the Totem Lathe, the light from her window shining over her right shoulder. From this angle, she could potentially push off from the Lathe with one foot, for leverage.  


She gently fit the edge of the blade into the gap between the Cruxtruder’s stack and its lid, right next to the point, and pulled down hard.  


It didn’t budge.  


She tried a second time; the metal of the blade seemed to flex a little. On the other hand, she heard some creaking from inside the Cruxtruder.  


She pushed herself up, both feet on the Lathe’s upper section, on a narrow ledge. The blade was now wedged tightly into the crevasse between the stack and lid; she jumped down, grabbing the blade with both hands, pushing down with all her weight.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55120606#workskin)


	33. Act 1- XXXIII

The blade snapped, something shattered, Star tumbled off the Cruxtruder and onto the ground. Still spry in her youth, she rolled from the impact, gently bumping up against her bed. She looked up.  


The blade was still wedged into the Cruxtruder, but it had broken at the mechanism. The rest of it, bracer and all, had flown out Star’s window into the back yard.  


Annoyed, she flipped her sylladex and checked her phone.  
  


SC: So that was freaking disastrous  
SV: Oh? Did you get the Cruxtruder open?  
SC: Heck no  
SC: Also broke the hidden blade  
SC: Sad  
SV: I think smacking it open might be more effective.  
SV: As I said previously.

[Examine Surroundings for Object of Sufficient Mass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55238419#workskin)


	34. Examine Surroundings for Object of Sufficient Mass [Act 1- XXXIV]

Star picked herself up off the ground. She was tempted, briefly, to dust herself off in a fashion reminiscent of a cartoon, itself reminiscent of early film; a visual trope to reinforce the irrelevance of her injury. She shook herself out of it; she was a literary woman, and should not be prone to such distractions.  


She was about to use a book as a blunt force weapon, though, perhaps undermining any credentials she might have as a Literary Woman, to say nothing of her proclivity for comic television.  


Star looked on her shelf.  


The _Harry Potter_ books stared back at her from eye level. Perfect. She captchalogued _Order of the Phoenix,_ hoping its chihuahua-slaying immensity would succeed where the precision of a blade had failed.  


She maneuvered herself into her previous perch by the Cruxtruder, avoiding the Blade as she did so, lest she slip and slice herself on its treacherous edge. Best to nip that in the bud; she used the book to bat at the blade, knocking it to the side, where it clattered to her bedroom floor.  


And then she struck the lid of the Cruxtruder, which exploded with light.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55350697#workskin)


	35. Act 1- XXXV

Star staggered, her balance upset; with one hand, she braced herself against the Totem Lathe behind her, while the other dropped the book.  


The Cruxtruder was now open, and floating above it was a deep blue orb, which flashed, as if strobed from within; it was luminous, simultaneously present and absent. Star looked into it and saw depth, forever, and also a mere surface, impenetrable; it showed, beside or between those contradictions, a very tight iteration of the same spirograph from the SBURB loading screen.  


She also saw, but may not have yet noticed, a countdown in the display on the Cruxtruder, in the same deep blue colour. Seven minutes, ten seconds.  
  


CB: holy shit what was that  
CB: oh hey you got the thing open  
CB: What the fuck is that ball?  
SC: Haven’t any idea  
SC: Are you done messing with my architecture?  
CB: Yes sorry  
CB: the controls are kinda shitty and my internet is acting up  
SC: Just let me figure this out before you do anything  
  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] ceased pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 12:51 --  
  
SC: So I got the thing open  
SC: Now there’s this flashing light in my room  
SC: What on earth is it?  
SV: I am not yet sure  
SV: Few of these guides have gotten much farther than you  
SV: I suppose, though, it may be beneficial to look at guides from the Beta. I will get back to you.  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:51 --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55488535#workskin)


	36. Act 1- XXXVI

Star sat down at her desk. At this point, she wanted some answers about this game herself; she googled it, finding the pages of halfbaked walkthroughs she’d been told about. Four or five links down, she was nearly ready to give up. People would get to about the point she was at, maybe a little farther, and then they’d either have given up or gotten too excited to update thoroughly, as updates beyond her progression level were cryptic at best.  


Frustrated, she tabbed back to Pesterchum, but neither CB nor SV had responded. BV was still idle. She did have one new message, though.  
  


\-- ephemeralsCaesura [EC] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:52 --  
  
EC: Happy birthday, Star. <3  
EC: I hope the day has treated you kindly  
EC: I apologise, I’ve been busy most of it. Life is a distracting mistress.  
EC: Also, thank you for the band name. I will add it to the list.  
SC: Thanks!  
SC: It’s still early here. Whatcha been up to today?  
EC: Now to business  
EC: (Oh, you know, this and that. Messed around with some new recording software. That sort of thing.)  
EC: I’m actually messaging to inform you of the need for urgency in your playthrough of SBURB  
EC: Which is to say, and perhaps here my verbosity serves us ill (oops), go pilfer your father’s telescope in the back garden and look northeast.  
SC: Umm  
SC: What?  
EC: Best be off. The night is young, and I don’t really believe I’ll be getting sleep any time soon.  
  
\-- ephemeralsCaesura [EC] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:53 --

[Obtain Telescope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55633930#workskin)


	37. Obtain Telescope [Act 1- XXXVII]

Star stared at her Pesterchum, an eyebrow raised in scepticism. EC was a weird human being, but a prankster, they were not. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to humour them while her friends figured this odd game out.  


She got up and headed toward the backyard. Pop was still absent; perhaps that was best. The mess of chair debris had been pushed toward the base of the trashcan, but hadn’t been entirely cleaned up. Otherwise, some photographs had been knocked off the wall, in their frames, and there was a section of the wall between the back hallway and the laundry room that was just missing, with no signs of damage; two feet of wall just gone. CB had been getting the hang of this by whatever means he needed, she supposed.  


It was getting slightly cloudier; banks of pale grey rolling clouds pouring over the mountains to the west, dimming the sky. Star shivered excitedly. The weather was perfect for a day indoors.  


She stepped outside. The grass was splotchy, yellow and green and torn up in places, poorly maintained only due to the sheer impossibility of keeping a lawn perfectly watered in such an arid climate.  


The patio, of bricks laid in a chevron-like pattern, was slightly damp. It must have rained sometime last night, or else Pop had washed it this morning. The glass table surface was dry, though, so she was unsure. The telescope was on the far section of the patio, near the gravel driveway at the far right (which was East, in the absolute) edge of the fairly large backyard.  


She took it from its tripod, gingerly clasping it in her hands; she knew it was important to Pop; it had belonged to his grandfather.  


She aimed it carefully at the sky and maneuvered so she could see past the umbrella stretching out of the patio tables. She looked through the eyepiece, squinting. She was looking nearer to the sun than was perfectly comfortable. She shifted it left a bit, and then a bit more. Her eyes widened, the visual equivalent of a gasp of surprise. She flipped her sylladex, captchalogued the telescope above the Server Disc, and flipped it back, so her phone was on top.  
  


SC: Shit.

[Look Skyward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55755946#workskin)


	38. Look Skyward [Act 1- XXXVIII]

Star stared at the meteor in the sky. She was not a scientist in the least, but it was, from her perspective, close enough to be concerning. It may hit miles wide of her house, of course, but given the warning her friend had just given her, she had to assume the worst.  
  


CB: oh fuck what’s wrong you ssaid a bad word that never happens  
SC: EC was being all weird and cryptic, yknow, like they do  
SC: And told me I should go look at the sky, and I did.  
SC: There is a rather large meteor headed toward me. I mean, I assume it’s actually heading toward me, as EC told me about it.  
CB: Shiit okay  
CB: so according to what SV jsut told me  
CB: she thinks oter people have gotten into some trouble progressing too fast and gottem  
CB: SV called them fail states, but i am gnna assume, based on the meteor shit, that they got dead  
CB: anyway so SV says you need to prototype your Kernelsprite next  
CB: the blue ball in your room  
CB: I have an idea, hang on  
SC: Stop messing with my stuff!  


[Prevent Ridiculousness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/55955569#workskin)


	39. Prevent Ridiculousness [Act 1- XXXIX]

Star bolted back into her house, hoping she would make it to her room before CB made something else horrible happen. He had already gotten her into one potentially fatal situation today.  


She made it in time to see her beloved plush cat, Traxxie, who she had owned since childhood and loved to the point of near-unrecognisability, floating toward the glowing orb, which CB had called a kernelsprite.  
  


SC: Oh sweet heavens no! You are not putting Traxxie in that thing!

[Retrieve Traxxie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56064142#workskin)


	40. Retrieve Traxxie [Act 1- XL]

Star jumped into the air, trying to snatch Traxxie from CB’s invisible, digital grasp, just as CB decided, apparently, to listen to her pleas and let go of Traxxie.  


As a result, which should have seemed fairly obvious and predictable given events so far, she batted the now-freefalling Traxxie into the flashing orb of light, which glowed brighter and then darker for a mere instant each, filling the room with light and then with an intense blue darkness.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56247262#workskin)


	41. Act 1- XLI

The Kernelsprite was no longer a glowing, flashing orb.  


Instead, in front of Star, there was a glowing, flashing Traxxie; or at least, a glowing, flashing simulacrum of Traxxie’s head; warping between infinite midnight blue and brilliant alabaster. Star stared at it, her eyebrow twitching.  


It spoke to her, sort of. She could sense some intention, but the sounds it emitted were more akin to a static hum interspersed with very distorted meowing and hissing.  
  


CB: SV said this was supposed to help you through the game  
CB: like an npc, if you did the protoype right  
SC: Traxxie better come out of there when this is over. Figure it out, ask SV, I don’t care.  
SC: Probably figure out the meteor first, though. Drat.  
SC: Alright, what do I do with this kernelsprite?  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] is no longer connected! --  
SC: Drat again.  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56386588#workskin)


	42. Act 1- XLII

Star glanced around her room. The Cruxtruder’s timer was displaying a mere three minutes and forty seconds remaining, presumably until the meteor in the sky impacted her house. She looked at the Kernelsprite, which was hovering over the various devices. She messaged SV.  
  


SC: CB’s internet must have gone down  
SC: I don’t know what he told you, but I am probably in some danger, possibly because of this game but certainly related to it. EC told me to look at the sky and there is a rather sizeable meteor descending rapidly. I’m gonna assume it’s headed close enough to my house to be concerned or EC wouldn’t have said anything.  
SV: Okay, give me a minute or two. I have found some walkthroughs from the Beta, although I’m seeing a lot of similar stuff.  
SV: One looks a little more in depth, though. Let’s see what we can do here.  


[Be the Other Guy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56587624#workskin)


	43. Be the Other Guy [Act I- XLIII]

Evan Harding sat in his bedroom. At sixteen, he was a fairly typical young man. He was of an average sort of height, a lanky sort of build, had a pair of lip piercings and long, slick hair, and was more than a little emo in aesthetic, though not in mannerisms. He liked video games, of many different varieties. He was an amateur game designer and coder himself, although he was not very good at either of those things. He also enjoyed a wide variety of music, many of which featured people dressed in black clothes and screaming loudly, though he also found danceable pop appealing. He watched a not-insignificant amount of Anime, usually in the background while he was gaming, absorbing plot by osmosis, or something. He occasionally imbibed marijuana, although he talked about it far more often than he actually did it. He also talked frequently and vocally about being gay, which was accurate. He wore a tight, white T-shirt with a simple, four-buttons and d-pad silhouette of a gaming controller in a plum-magenta colour. 

His bedroom was poorly lit, by preference; he had a single lamp, with no shade (nor tea, for that matter) and an incandescent lightbulb blazing. He had a number of posters for bands, most of which were ripped; Fall Out Boy, Nine Inch Nails, a few anime bands he only sometimes remembered the names of, Electric Six, and Ke$ha, which seemed out of blace, but damn, was Tik Tok a bop. He had a few ill maintained medieval weapons laying around, mostly for kicks; a handaxe and a pair of long daggers were on his dresser, next to his PlayStation 4, and a lightweight battleaxe was embedded into his wall, where he’d left it after messing around. A number of throwing stars, some metal, most plastic, were in piles on the desk, dresser, or end table, or else stuck into one of the aforementioned surfaces or the wall. Clothes were strewn about. He sat on a beanbag chair in the corner, his laptop on a cushy lapdesk on his lap. 

CB: so i got the thing prototyped  
CB: i was gonna use her stuffed cat but she told me notto,  
CB: but she slapped it in after idroppecd it  
CB: hilarouis right?  
CB: any way  
CB: what next?  
SV: Supposedly the Kernelsprite is a personal NPC, to guide you through the process  
SV: Though a good number of these walkthroughs indicate it is more cryptic and unhelpful. We are nearly caught up to most of these guide-makers, though.  
SV: I’ve been looking at guides from the Beta. I’m sure it isn’t the same but I imagine it won’t hurt.  
CB: cool cool lemme check on star  
CB: also teh kittiesprite is funny  
SV: I’m sure.  
  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] ceased pestering seraphsVindicator [SV] at 11:54 --  
  
CB: SV said this was supposed to help you through the game  
CB: like an npc, if you did the protoype right  
SC: Traxxie better come out of there when this is over. Figure it out, ask SV, I don’t care.  
SC: Probably figure out the meteor first, though. Drat.  
SC: Alright, what do I do with this kernelsprite?  
  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] is no longer connected! --

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56751808#workskin)


	44. Act 1- XLIV

Evan smashed his face into his keyboard. His internet had been only mildly responsive most of the day, and now the power was out. Sis might have forgotten to pay the bill again, but more likely, there was a breaker that needed to be flipped. This building was on its last legs. Evan could go and look at it, but that risked an encounter with Sis, which was always worth avoiding. 

Evan set his laptop down. It was still on; the battery would last a whole thirteen minutes or so with the power off, though, so he put it to sleep. He captchalogued it, fitting it neatly on the left side of his Puzzle Modus. He only had eight cards, and so had only infrequently pushed the Puzzle Modus to its limits. One of the advantages of captchaloguing things, namely cards holding things of essentially any size, was limited by his particular modus, which required him to arrange cards (of sizes relative to the object’s size, weight, and complexity. Living things were often larger cards than nonliving things of the same size, for example, which had tickled Evan when he was younger, and would captchalogue squirrels for the fun of it.) in a hypothetical space of limited dimensions. The upside, of course, was its relative ease of use. 

He only had his laptop and a lunchbox with some marijuana paraphernalia in his sylladex at the moment, having six cards to work with. 

He left his room. The power appeared to be out in the rest of the apartment, too. Sis was nowhere in sight; she slept in the living room, for lack of space. Her bed was unmade. The front door was locked. Evan looked out the back window, above Sis’s bed. It was cloudy, rainy. An average sort of day. His apartment was on the fifth floor of a twelve floor building; they did not have a balcony, as a single-bedroom apartment.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56751937#workskin)


	45. Act 1- XLV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today. Happy 413 from Author and her fiance. ~HA

Evan headed to the closet next to the kitchenette. Sis kept a couple of jackets in there, but mostly, it had collected the various things needed on only an irregular basis. A small hand vacuum. Beach towels. Sewing supplies. Bleach and Windex and Scrubbing Bubbles. The keys to get into the storage, laundry, and workout rooms in the basement. A few of Sis’s maces, flails, and pickaxes had made their way in here as well, cluttered on the floor. Sis LARPed. 

The apartment’s breaker box was in here as well. Nothing was tripped, though. The problem must be building-wide. Evan threw his head back in dramatic frustration. He headed back to his room, looking for shoes, as he was currently barefoot and would have to go to the basement, which was not particularly navigable in such a state. 

He noticed his phone, on his bedside table. Oh. 

\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 11:56 --  
  
CB: heyy i found my phone  
CB: lemme figure out teathering it as a hotspot  
CB: so i can save yrour life and shit  
SC: We have less than two minutes and SV and I have done what we can without you so please!  
  


[Set Up Mediocre Internet Connection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/56908261#workskin)


	46. Set Up Mediocre Internet Connection [Act 1- XLVI]

Evan fiddled with his phone’s settings, groaned, opened his mobile browser, Hemera Lite, and tried to figure out the hotspot setup. His battery, at least, was at 62 percent; long enough to get this done. He switched apps back to his settings; his mediocre, third party smartphone had been cheap, and its settings weren’t even labelled entirely in English. He looked for the symbols the webpage had indicated, double tapped them, put in his pin, and waited. He retrieved his laptop from its card as he did so.  


He set up the wifi, password and all, manually, while waiting for the phone to finish setting it up. His laptop battery said it had nine minutes remaining.  


He pressed enter as his phone chirped. He tabbed into Pesterchum.  
  


CB: kay im good what should i do  
SC: There should be a punched card in the Phernalia Registry. SV says you need to give it to me.  
CB: kk gotcha lemme do  


[Star: Perform Alchemical/Mechanical Operation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/57055030#workskin)


	47. Star: Perform Alchemical/Mechanical Operation [Act 1- XLVII]

Star looked at her phone nervously. The timer gave her a mere thirty six seconds remaining. 

A captchalogue card, with holes in it, appeared in the air in front of her; she snatched it and roughly jammed it into the Totem Lathe, which she had already put a blue cylinder of Cruxite into, at SV’s direction. 

The Lathe whirred and spun the Cruxite Dowel, as SV had insisted she call it, shearing off portions of it, which disappeared, rather than filling the room with the crystalline or plasticky material. She wasn’t sure how to describe its texture, it was somehow both. 

She picked up the now-carved Totem and slammed it onto the Alchemiter; a red beam appeared to read the Totem (which seemed, to Star, to render the Lathe an entirely unnecessary middle step), and then, in a flash of blue light…

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/57240331#workskin)


	48. Act 1- XLVIII

A miniature cow stood in Star’s bedroom, atop the Alchemiter. It was blue, made entirely of Cruxite, and seemed immobile. Star stared at it. The countdown read fifteen seconds.  


Above, the meteor bore down on her house; she could see, out her window, a faint shadow eclipsing the sunlight.  
  


SC: What on earth do I do? SV didn’t say anything past this  
CB: uhhh  
CB: milk it?  
CB: milk like your lief depends on it  



	49. Milk Like Your Leif Depends On It [Act 1- XLIX]

Star approached the immobile cow; it was cool to the touch. Ten seconds. 

She knelt, touching the cow’s udders, which felt like porcelain. She grasped them and yanked like she’d seen in bad movies. The shadow overhead grew. She pulled harder, harder; a flash of light blinded her. Whether from the udders or the meteor, she could not say. She felt something she didn’t quite understand; a movement somehow along an axis she could not comprehend nor could she ignore. The ground was still under her feet, the udders still in her hand, the air was still motionless and unscented, but she felt it nonetheless. She could not see. She heard nothing. The udders vanished from her hands, as suddenly as they, and the whole cow, had appeared on the Alchemiter. 

The meteor impacted the ground, levelling a suburban block and then some in an instant.

END OF ACT 1

[ACT 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/57611467#workskin)   



	50. Act 2 Act 1- I

A young woman, Kate Metaxas, stood in her bedroom. She had an angular sort of face and loose, pale hair. Her walls were metal, painted white; her bed, merely a mattress atop a curved white metal frame, was covered in a golden bedspread over white sheets. Her walls were virtually bare. On her desk was a sword, unadorned, on a metal stand. A sculpture of an angel, bedecked in armour with a longsword in a triumphant pose, was the only other decoration. Her bedroom door was closed, but it, too, was plain white metal. 

Her computer was on her desk, plugged in; she had a mouse and mousepad, as she approached these things like a professional. She did not own a cell phone. 

There was a stand with a television on it across from her dresser; it was gathering dust. She rarely watched television. Next to her desk was a closed cabinet attached to the wall. 

The screen by her door, attached to the wall, showed the weather above. Slightly cloudy. Warm enough. It also indicated that there was mail in her mailbox, several hours before it should, by the normal schedule, be there. It also showed that she was, for the thousand, one hundred and twelfth day, alone. Unsurprising. 

Kate played video games with her friends. She read voraciously about Dungeons and Dragons and similar games, and occasionally played them over the internet, which was, she had been told, no substitute for the real thing. She had tried to invent a game like that which would function better from a distance, on a number of occasions to varying degrees of success. 

She dreamed of flying often. She wore a white t-shirt with a sword, pointing downward, flanked by unfurled wings, all in a pale gold colour. She liked Angels and stories about the sky. 

She checked Pesterchum.  
  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering seraphsVindicator [SV] at 14:28 --  
  
SC: CB is in over his head  
SC: What are we supposed to do  
SV: All of the walkthroughs I am seeing are a little on the incoherent side  
SV: Day one, I guess; everybody thinks they’ve got the chops to be the new sherpa. But they’re all rushed. For right now, it looks like there are some essential equipment items in the Phernalia Registry section of the menu that CB should deploy for you  
SV: Ideally all in easy proximity, which may require some rearranging of your house.  
SC: Also what the heck even is this game, while we’re on the subject?  
SV: I should probably tell him about that before he breaks your house.  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 14:31 --  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 14:31 --  
  
SV: I have been looking at SBURB walkthroughs. Well, middling attempts at such. It is day one  
CB: oh? anything useful ?  
SV: I believe so. You should stop breaking Star’s house and look in the Phernalia Registry section of the menu. I believe the large machines in there are necessary for the progression.  
CB: ah kay  
CB: cool, will do  
SV: I am going to go check my mail, in hopes that SBURB has arrived, although at this time of day, that is unlikely.  
  
\-- seraphsVindicator [SV] ceased pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 14:34 --

[Kate: Check Your Mail](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/57745084#workskin)


	51. Kate: Check Your Mail [Act 2 Act 1- II]

She moved to leave her room; she may as well check the mail. Hopefully it was the game, so she could get in on these bizarre happenings and clean up the mess she heard Evan was making of Star’s game, before he caused irreparable damage. 

As she approached her door, it slid open, as was normal. 

Outside her bedroom, a hallway with a door to the bathroom. Beyond that, a living area with a couch, two chairs, a table, four chairs, and a kitchen. There was food in the fridge, always; new things would appear if it had been running low the day prior. A few years ago, she had stayed up to see if someone entered the dwelling to replace it. Nobody had, and she had gone somewhat hungry the next day. 

Kate lived alone. There was a ladder that permitted her to exit the house. She had left on a handful of occasions over the years; the ladder took her up, into a small cave that exited onto a rocky beach. She had never gone more than two hours in any direction, and there was no way inland, as the beach was cut off by a tall cliff as far as she had walked. 

The mail came into a chute in the wall every day; she hadn’t yet worked out where from. It was always addressed to an address in New York City, which Kate was certain she had never been to. She opened the chute, or, more accurately, it opened as she approached. There was a single envelope in it. 

She took it, and raised an eyebrow.

[Examine Envelope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/57942613#workskin)


	52. Examine Envelope [Act 2 Act 1- III]

Kate was holding a copy of SBURB: Special Server Edition, with a label on the sleeve addressing it to Star Rogers. She captchalogued it; the card was shuffled into the rest of her sylladex, as her modus, Shufflestack, dictated. It was a “top-to-bottom” modus, like the ubiquitous Stack modus, but instead of the most recently captchalogued item always being accessible, the sequence of cards in her sylladex was randomised every time she captchalogued something. She was only holding the SBURB disc and a Key Card, which she needed in the event that she left her house. She had three empty cards remaining. The SBURB disc had shuffled to the top, which was probably for the best. 

She turned, to return to her room; there was a flash at the corner of her eye, from the kitchen. 

She turned to look at it, but the kitchen was empty. 

She investigated.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/58115041#workskin)


	53. Act 2 Act 1- IV

The kitchen was empty. The counters had the usual black cutting boards, black appliances, and white surfaces; plain and clean. Everything was clean. She could leave a mess for a few hours and it would usually be clean when she came back. 

The refrigerator contained the usual assortment of things for this time of year. Lunchmeats. Milk, cheese, and eggs. Bundles of various vegetables, fresh. A pound of different fruits, usually ones that were nearing the end of seasonality, she’d discovered. A bottle of juice. A single can of soda, this time Dr Pepper; she got one every Saturday, like clockwork. 

The pantry was likewise normal for her space. A few small loaves of bread, like large dinner rolls, for sandwiches and the like. Several boxes of pasta and cans of soup or sauces. Some rice. Some potatoes. A collection of black pots, in immaculate condition. 

There was no sign of an intruder, that Kate could detect, at least. She leaned against the door to the pantry as she closed it, keeping her back to the wall and the whole room in her vision for a second. There was nothing out of place, in the slightest. 

And then she fell asleep.

[Be the Other Gay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/58292323#workskin)


	54. Be the Other Gay [Act 2 Act 1- V]

Evan watched his computer screen as Star milked the cow, and then it vanished. He had just enough time to see Star look around, as if assessing her situation in confusion, before his laptop, which had previously told him he had several minutes of power to work with, turned off. He captchalogued it, virtually hurling the card into its hypothetical space. Annoyed, he snatched a throwing star from his bedside table and hucked it at the wall; instead, it lodged into his dresser, a few inches shy of hitting his television. 

There was nothing for it now but to investigate the main breaker box for the building, in its basement. He headed toward the apartment’s door, grabbing the keys from the closet in the living room and captchaloguing them, too.  
  


\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] began pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:02 --  
  
CB: my powre is still fucked up  
CB: im going to check my basement snd see if i can fix it  
CB: my phone has some battrey so pester if you need me. you seem safe tho. brb.  
  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] ceased pestering schmoozierCaptain [SC] at 12:03 --  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/58500628#workskin)


	55. Act 2 Act 1- VI

Evan left his apartment. The emergency lights were on in the hall, so the building’s backup generator was working, at least. If nobody was down there tinkering with the systems, he figured he could always plug into it directly. 

The stairs, too, were lit by the emergency system. The elevator, obviously, was nonfunctional. He returned to his bedroom, briefly, and retrieved a carpet sample square, about three feet by two feet, before heading back to the stairs.

[Do a Rad Carpet Slide](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/58668778#workskin)


	56. Do a Rad Carpet Slide [Act 2 Act 1- VII]

Rather than walk down six flights of stairs to the basement, Evan slid on the carpet square down the metal bannister, reducing the friction with the carpet square. He slipped and fell off twice, scraping his elbow on the rough concrete of the poorly maintained stairwell. It was for emergency use only, was cleaned once a month at best, and wasn’t exactly built for presentation or comfort in the first place. 

Sliding, it took him a couple of minutes to reach the bottom, even with his mishaps. He was also amused by the experience, which was worth something by itself. At a younger age, he might not have admitted it, concerned though he would have been with seeming intense and brooding. 

He captchalogued the carpet square, making sure it was at the far back corner of his sylladex, just for sanity’s sake, and then retrieved the keys to the storage room. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d been down here before.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/58836451#workskin)


	57. Act 2 Act 1- VIII

The storage room was lit by the same emergency lighting system, though not particularly efficiently. The room had been partitioned into lockers by chain link gates, floor to ceiling, with little thought for how the regular lighting had been built into the walls, let alone the emergency lights; Evan could clearly see that there were things stored in here, and that there was a breaker box at the far end of the room, and that the path between him and there looked relatively clear, although it was about as straight as he was, weaving between storage pens, and not all of the corners were visible. 

He moved toward the chain link barrier, intending on holding it with one hand and just moving by a wall the whole way, and made it about six steps through the labyrinthine storage area before he slipped on another apartment-dwellers misplaced excess. 

He flailed comically; gripping the chain link with both hands, his feet slapped at the ground repeatedly, as if on slick ice, before he found his footing again. This was treacherous. He retrieved his phone, intending to search for a guide on navigating dark spaces. As he unlocked the device, however, he noticed that it, too, emitted light. 

He shook his head at himself, flipped his phone’s flashlight on, and walked forward, carefully. Behind him, the Lincoln Logs that had spilled out of his neighbour’s storage lockup were scattered across the floor, kicked away by his flailing legs.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/59043511#workskin)


	58. Act 2 Act 1- IX

A left turn, then a right turn. He saw, when he entered the room, the breaker box on the wall, seemingly a couple dozen meters away, with a couple of storage lockers in the middle. The path through the room, however, had taken him out of the breaker box’s visual range. He took another right turn, and then another, squeezing between the concrete wall (to his left) and the chain link of the back end of one of the lockers (on his right). He doubted he was supposed to fit in there; there was probably a more obvious path through the room, but he had been sticking to the wall, only moving clockwise, the same way he’d navigate a dungeon in a new game. Three or four lockers later, he was still squozen between the wall and the lockers. 

He pushed himself up, bracing one leg against the concrete and clambering up using the chain link as foot and handhold on the other side, holding his phone in his left hand. When he’d made it a few feet up, he shone the flashlight around. 

The room was larger than he’d expected, for starters; even from his current perch, he could not see the breaker box, although he saw the illuminated EXIT sign, far behind him and to the right. As he looked ahead, he saw that the line of lockers continued to the edge of the room, dead-ending. There was no use continuing to squeeze forward, he figured, shining the light one last time from the far wall back to himself in a straight line, looking for a way forward he may have missed. Backtracking, as he saw it, would ruin the already-sketchy mental map he’d established, but it seemed there was no other choice. 

Then he saw a glint along the concrete wall he hadn’t noticed, maybe five or six meters from him. A door, unmarked and closed. He climbed back down, captchaloguing his phone so as to have both hands to hold the walls. It was dark without the flashlight, however, and he fell the last few feet, landing on his ass.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/59147260#workskin)


	59. Act 2 Act 1- X

Evan approached the door, phone-as-flashlight once more in hand, and opened it. He pulled it toward himself, and the heavy metal door, though a little sticky and creaking rather loudly, swung open with no objection. And then it hit the chain link fence. The storage units had not been set up with this door in mind, and there wasn’t enough space to pull the door all the way open. He jiggled it, but the door’s corners were lodged in the chain link. He’d unwittingly built a door-shaped wall between himself and the doorway. Evan facepalmed, substituting the door for his palm, with an audible _thunk_. He spent a solid twelve seconds rolling his eyes and calling himself a stupid bitch. He pushed the door shut, shoving it hard to unstuck it from the chain link, and then stepped to the other side of the door, before entering the room behind this bastard of a door. 

This was obviously not the storage room. Evan was surprised it was unlocked, although he supposed the labyrinthine storage area may have been enough to dissuade anyone who didn’t already know how to get through from ever finding the door. The walls were still concrete. There was no EXIT sign anywhere in the room, so clearly it wasn’t meant for the public. Evan followed the wall to his left, a strategy he was convinced was foolproof, shining the light in front of him, in a gentle arc. He checked his phone. He had no signal down here, so he couldn’t update Star. It had been a solid twenty minutes since he’d left the apartment.

[Kate: Wake Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/59323780#workskin)


	60. Kate: Wake Up [Act 2 Act 1- XI]

Kate woke up; it felt like no time had passed. One second, she felt herself falling asleep in her kitchen. The next, she felt herself waking up in a bed that was not her own, although it certainly felt safe and familiar enough to be her own. 

She looked around. Rather than the white, metallic walls of her bedroom, this room’s walls were stone, covered in wallpaper or something similar, or perhaps painted with a complex abstract mural, and were a soft golden colour. The room was essentially her bedroom; it had her desk, though minus the computer, with the angel statue and the sword. The cabinet next to it was still there, though here it was ajar, and she could see the collection of swords inside it. Her dresser was likewise present. Her bed was also in the same relative central location it was supposed to be. It was both, she concluded, after pondering this for several long seconds (or perhaps several short hours), her bedroom and not her bedroom. Strangest of all, though, there was no door. There were windows, though; a feature noticeably absent in her normal bedroom, underground as it was. 

She sat up. She was wearing pyjamas, and did not remember putting them on, which, while not the weirdest thing to happen to her in recent times, especially considering her present surroundings, she found quite unnerving. 

The pyjamas were yellow-gold; not the soft colour of her walls, but bright, and somewhat frilly. Instead of her winged sword, the shirt bore the emblem of a crescent moon. 

She rose to her feet, circling the room for a second. She realised she was floating. 

Kate experienced déjà vu frequently, probably due to her odd living circumstances. She had her suspicions that her memory had been altered, though she couldn’t say how. Circumstances that by all rights should be strange are instead familiar, though distantly, through a veil unpierceable. This, though, was the opposite feeling. Vujà dé, probably. That is almost certainly what it’s called. 

Or no, not quite; that would imply that she had been here before, but felt strongly as if she had not. Instead, she neither knew whether or not she had been here before, and the location felt both strange and familiar in turn and simultaneously; as if the déjà vu and the vujà dé were circling each other ‘round the drain of her head. 

Kate shook her head vigorously, and floated out the window, which she somehow knew exactly how to do.

[Explore Strange Environment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/59835685#workskin)


	61. Explore Strange Environment [Act 2 Act 1- XII]

Kate gazed out at the space around her. The sky was black, endlessly so; she knew instinctively (and this thought disturbed her) that this was not the same black sky she could see at night if she left her cave bunker home. There was no sun overhead, that she could see, nor any other source of light in the sky, and yet she could see as if it were day. 

The bedroom she had just floated out of sat in an orb, at the top of a tall tower; beneath her was a cityscape of bright yellow-gold. Her bedroom towered over the rest of the city. And, peculiarly, she could see the curvature of the Earth (or, she amended, whatever non-Earth celestial body this more likely is). 

Another minute of looking around confirmed this suspicion. This golden worldlet she floated around was attached by an enormous golden chain to a much larger golden world, likely (based on what she could see) also covered in a tremendous golden city. 

In the distance, as she floated about, she could see another tower on her small wordlet, identical in appearance to the one she’d only just exited. That seemed as serviceable a destination as any. She leaned toward the tower. If she leaned one way, she’d float in that direction, slower than walking on firm ground. Quickly growing frustrated at the pace, she tried to swim toward it, found that less effective than she had hoped, and settled for the meandering pace of travel that gently leaning that direction gave her.

[Experience Awe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/63646225#workskin)


	62. Experience Awe [Act 2 Act 1- XIII]

Several minutes passed. As she floated away from the tower, she looked behind her, continuing to lean backwards so as to keep progressing in the direction she desired. 

Her mouth dropped open just a little. 

Behind her tower, she could see an enormous planet, looming over the little golden wordlet. It looked like Earth as drawn by a talented toddler: a blue sphere covered in swirling white clouds. She could see the faintest trace of a symmetrical pattern on it, matching the one she had seen on Star’s Server Disc. 

She was unsure how she hadn’t noticed it before, though it struck her that the planet she was on (or, well, floating above) was probably rotating and revolving, as planets do. She watched the larger planet; it seemed to move overhead, closer to her, which really meant that the other planet was rotating in the opposite direction. Probably. Assuming that this world worked as expected, which, Kate realised, was not a particularly safe assumption. 

She continued toward the other tower.

[Evan: Examine Surroundings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/63827299#workskin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pandemic weird. ~HA


	63. Evan: Examine Surroundings [Act 2 Act 1- XIV]

The room Evan stood in was not part of his apartment building. Well, clearly it was, physically (barring, perhaps, a door between the basement of this building and the basement of the next). In purpose and style, though, it was incongruous. The concrete was slightly nicer, either set more recently, trodden upon less often, or built of higher quality materials in the first place. Likewise, the walls were smooth, and he had found a working light switch, though the room was only lit sparsely. He didn’t know if it was the lights or the walls or the machines against one wall, but the whole room had a slightly green tinge to it.  


Oh, yes! There were machines against one of the walls, like what he imagined computers looked like in the olden days (and he wasn’t particularly inaccurate; these machines indeed resembled, in silhouette, at least, very old mainframe computers). He did not recognise them from the cursory examination he had given them. He was about to start pressing buttons or flipping switches or spinning dials when he noticed an icon on one of them. It matched the spirograph logo that had been on his SBURB server envelope. This was sufficient to give him pause; he didn’t want to do something that might jeopardise the game.  


There was power, down here, though; that much was obvious. All of these machines were powered enough to have lights telling him they were not doing anything, or were off, or on, or something. He was guessing.  


He was examining one of the machines, a great lump of grey metal with a handful of numeric dials built in and a large black screen that was currently off, when he tripped, falling backwards onto another machine. The room seemed to disappear as he fell backwards into light.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/63997297#workskin)


	64. Act 2 Act 1- XV

Evan’s ass hit the metal surface; it was not, however, the same metal surface (although it was identical to the one he’d fallen towards). He assumed as much, anyway, as he was very clearly in a different room. This one was larger, by far, although still dimly lit and vaguely green (and, once more, he was unsure if that was the light or the machines lined up throughout the room or the walls or the floor, and while yes, his hands were green, the lights above, when glanced at them squintily, were not). He stood up, stepping cautiously off the metal platform that had teleported him to this room. Or so he assumed, that is; skipping through the confused reactions that others may have and directly to “oh, I suppose teleportation is a thing, Occam’s Razor be damned.”  


The room was large and filled with machines similar to those in the room in his apartment basement. All of these seemed to be powered down, with the exception of the one he had teleported through, (which may well have powered on in response to a teleport signal, for all he knew). There were, he noticed, stairs heading up, way over at one end of the room. He was in the middle, roughly; twenty yards to his left and right, sixty or more ahead of and behind him. He could see light from the upper floor, making the stairs particularly noticeable in that “way a game points out a level exit” sort of fashion. Considering the nonsense with Star’s game, he approached far more carefully than he had everything previously.

[Ascend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64047496#workskin)


	65. Ascend [Act 2 Act 1- XVI]

As Evan approached the stairs, he reconsidered his prior analysis of the surroundings. That is, he realised the light around the stairs was not really from the upper floor.  
The ceiling above was crumbling in places and buckled in others. Slag and other melted bits had dripped down the wall, as if the building had been bombed months if not years ago. The stairs were mostly intact; with a little finagling, he was able to clamber up them, gripping the railing tightly whenever there were more than a couple steps missing and, once, catching himself with his arms when a half-melted stair gave way underneath him.  


He had been expecting, for no reason in particular, snow. The aesthete in him, perhaps, recognised the beauty in a modern ruin covered in heavy snowfall, paralleling the ashy circumstance that may have caused such devastation, quiet at last, the grey replaced with clean white contrasting with the jagged lines of human ambition fallen to the flames.  
Alternatively, he had played one too many video games with a level riffing on that aesthetic to the point that it had become tired, a trope devoid of all its meaning, vacuous and best relegated to the archives of popular culture, like blue and orange movie posters and the BeeGees.  


Instead, the ground was barely covered in patchy grass. There were clouds overhead. Evan was standing, he realised, in a large, shallow crater. The rim of it was maybe six meters above his head and probably at least thirty away, to his left, where it was closest. There were steel beams, half-melted or worse, scattered about, and chunks of concrete of varying sizes, including pillars from the foundation, left mostly intact. Behind him, the basement bunker was exposed to the air through the dirt in several places; he could see the general outline of the room, which looked to be only a portion of the footprint of the large building. There were several cracks or melted holes in the roof of the basement, but none large enough to climb through, save the severely-damaged entrance and staircase.  


He still did not have a phone signal.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64047523#workskin)


	66. Act 2 Act 1- XVII

Evan returned to the former basement, rather than climbing the rim of the crater, which, while potentially getting him closer to a signal, seemed difficult, and he was scrawny. Also, as potentially relevant as these surroundings may have seemed to an outside observer, Evan was still fairly certain that he should get the power back on posthaste.  


He ran back to the metal platform that had transported him here. It was no longer powered, apparently; or else he had to do something beyond just stepping on it to trigger it. He was not certain. He jumped up and down on the platform, to be sure. Nothing happened.

[Examine Platform](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64134931#workskin)


	67. Examine Platform [Act 2 Act 1- XVIII]

The platform had no blinking lights. It had no buttons, levers, switches, or funny little touchscreen inputs. It was unadorned, except by a spiky triangle with bits missing that looked somewhat similar to the twisty circle all over SBURB.  


Evan jumped toward it, backwards; he reasoned that if landing ass-first had teleported him once, it may well do so again.  


It did not.

[Examine Everything Else](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64295080#workskin)


	68. Examine Everything Else [Act 2 Act 1- XIX]

The rest of the machines were off, too. He figured something had to be powering the lights, though, so perhaps he could figure out how to turn everything else on.  
He hopped over a row of machines, his foot catching midleap such that he nearly faceplanted on the other side. A _traceur_, he was not. Best to go around. He walked up and down the aisles between rows of computers and equipment he did not recognise. None of it was on. Some had stacks of smaller components on them, neatly or in piles; cubes with power outlets on them, remotes, what looked like old PDAs with attached styluses.  


He reached the side of the room. He turned on his phone’s flashlight; the lights on this wall had gone out at some point prior to his arrival.  


There was a logo on this wall, over a large screen, currently darkened. A stylised SN, with the twisty SBURB circle embedded in the S, as well as a symbol like an atom.  


Under the screen was a keyboard setup, attached to the wall. There were large, mad-scientist-lab switches on the wall, a couple of meters from the screen. Evan had little self control.

[Throw Switches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64358239#workskin)


	69. Throw Switches [Act 2 Act 1- XX]

He grabbed one of the switches, which was in the up position, and threw it down, rather violently. It had the satisfying thwack sound one would expect from a Frankensteinian Switch, and fluorescent lights with that now-familiar hint of green turned on, in slow sequence, across the whole ceiling. 

He threw the other one. The screen turned on; he could also see, from here, the other machines lighting up. A loading bar on the screen slowly filled, presumably as the computer attached to this monitor booted up. He waited. 

When it was finished, it showed the same twisty circle, in green, on a black background. It was rotating slowly. Underneath, it said “SKAIANET UNESTABLISHMENT IN -91,893:3:10.” Evan was unsure what this meant, exactly. 

The screen appeared to stutter briefly; the seconds on the countdown continued to count down and then stopped. 

The screen changed. The symbol disappeared. “SECONDARY SKAIANET MONITORING SYSTEM ACTIVE> RETRIEVING LOGS,” the screen now displayed, alongside a progress bar, which was inching along slowly. Glacially. Millimeter-ing along, if not less.

[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64503136#workskin)


	70. Act 2 Act 1- XXI

Evan threw up his hands (metaphorically; unless one prefers to imagine literal, exaggerated reactions, usually more suited to the stage than the page, in which case, please enjoy these antics) at the positively snail-like pace of the system. Also, it seemed unlikely that this computer would provide him with the information needed to get a Wi-Fi connection working. He proceeded to return the platform in the middle, roughly, of the room. His phone chirped.

[Check PesterLite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64693192#workskin)


	71. Check PesterLite [Act 2 Act 1- XXII]

He leaned against one of the tall, blocky machines as he looked at his phone. He supposed turning everything on may have activated an internet signal in here. He ignored the perhaps-troubling question of how exactly his phone connected to it, as he did everywhere else, until one day, at twenty five years of age, probably, his banking login would be stolen when he tried to use the app from an unsecure network in a Denny’s parking lot, probably.  
  


\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] began pestering canabisBlackcocks [CB] at 12:03 --  
  
SC: Well I’m alive so I guess it worked  
SC: Oh no  
SC: Pop’s car is in the back yard...  
SC: I can see it from the kitchen  
SC: Did he get hit? The house is still here...  
SC: On a more important note, why is the sky, uh, different?  
\-- canabisBlackcocks [CB] is now an idle chum! --  
SC: Evan as kindly as possible, what the fuck?  
SC: There’s nothing here except my house  
SC: The... The stars are different! Evan!  


[==->](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64809943#workskin)


	72. Chapter 72

Evan briefly responded to Star. After his second message, he looked around, phone still in hands, so that he might see a new message in relatively short order. 

The screen at the far end of the room was still showing a progress bar.  
  


CB: shit fuck sorry i edned up in a weird basement thst isn’t my basement  
CB: was trying to fix my a partmint’s power  
CB: be back soon  
CB: o wait dammit I have wifi  
\-- schmoozierCaptain [SC] is now an idle chum! --  


[Take Advantage of Dubious WiFi to Help Your Friend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026156/chapters/64981336#workskin)


	73. Take Advantage of Dubious WiFi to Help Your Friend [Act 2 Act 1- XXIV]

He uncaptchalogued his laptop. It was still at one edge of his puzzlespace, fortunately; he hadn’t paid a ton of attention when he’d captchalogued it in the first place, but things usually worked out okay with this modus. He’d tried to use the Jenga modus, for the memes, in middle school, but after the Ballistic Dildo Incident of ‘14, the principle insisted he use a “school-approved” fetch modus, and also, refrain from bringing captchalogued adult materials to school (he didn’t stop, but switching modi meant he never got caught). 

The WiFi was slow; it was taking several minutes just to check his Pesterchum, which he figured he should do before he tried to load the Server, in case more recent messages from Star had come in. 

But it was extremely slow, so fuck it, let’s do both at once, I guess, Evan; he clicked into the server program after a minute of mousing over a clutter of desktop icons from abandoned code projects. He stared at the loading screen. 

This was agony.


End file.
